"I didn't mean to hurt her," Bobby Cutts Jr. testified, clutching a handful of white tissues.
Cutts, 30, said he was at Jessie Davis' home to pick up his 2½-year-old son, Blake, and was telling her to hurry. He started to leave after she didn't move more quickly to get Blake ready, he said, but she stopped him. He pointed his finger at her face, and she bit it, he testified.
Cutts tried to leave again, but Davis grabbed his arm and told him he couldn't, the suspect testified. He pulled his arm away and threw his elbow back, telling jurors that it landed in Davis' throat area and that she fell hard.
During four hours of testimony, Cutts also said he drove around with the body and later mulched his yard and went to work, trying to tell himself nothing was wrong.
Thousands searched for the 26-year-old Davis for more than a week, until Cutts led authorities to the body wrapped in a comforter in the park.
"I made a weeklong bad decision," Cutts testified Monday.
Cutts could receive the death penalty if convicted of killing Davis, who was nearly full term with a female fetus when she died last June.
Cutts said he performed CPR, then tried to use bleach to revive her; a large bleach stain was found in her room.
"She wasn't responding and I knew she was dead," Cutts testified.
He said he recalled thinking: "No way this is happening; this is not happening."
Under questioning from his own attorney, Fernando Mack, Cutts said he didn't know why he failed to call police.
"How do you explain that?" Cutts said, raising his voice. "I just wanted to go get my son. I didn't want anybody to get hurt."
Cutts testified that he didn't want Blake to see his mother, so he put Davis' body in the bed of her truck and went to a friend's house while the boy slept.
Later, he said he drove around in a panic, not knowing what to do.
"I can't keep driving around with her body in the back of this truck," he said - so when he saw a dirt road leading to a park, he pulled in.
"Did you leave Jessie at that location?" Mack said.
"Yeah," Cutts said between sobs.
After more than two hours of testimony, Cutts sat sniffling on the stand as assistant prosecutor Dennis Barr began his cross-examination.
"Mr. Cutts, do you have a cold? Because I don't see any tears," Barr said.
Defense attorneys objected.
"Did you cry this much when you dumped Jessie's body in the park?" Barr asked.
"After I dumped her body, yes, I did cry," Cutts said.
When asked by Barr why he didn't call 911 after he struck Davis, Cutts said that had he tried, using Davis' cell phone, but that he couldn't get the phone to work.
Prosecutors said Cutts was feeling the pressure of his crumbling marriage, financial debt and supporting several children. The state rested its case Friday, with closing arguments scheduled for Tuesday.
The former police officer in Canton is on trial on aggravated murder and other charges.
